Willem DafoeFilmography

Daybreakers

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill

Synopsis: Fresh off the success of their inventive take on the zombie genre, Undead masterminds Michael and Peter Spierig direct Ethan Hawke in an ambitious tale of a futuristic Earth populated entirely by vampires, and the efforts made by the creatures to ensure that their food supply doesn't run out as Read More

Fireflies in the Garden

Actors: Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss

Synopsis: An average American family suffers from a grave and unexpected loss that forces its members to confront past issues in this all-star ensemble drama from acclaimed director Dennis Lee (Jesus Henry Christ). Julia Roberts stars as Lisa Taylor, the wife of a college professor, Charlie (Willem Dafoe) Read More

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Actors: Michael Shannon, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier

Synopsis: The first collaboration between legendary filmmakers David Lynch and Werner Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is loosely based on the true story of a San Diego man whose mystifying experiences lead him to commit a shocking act of matricide. Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny, and William Dafoe Read More

Adam Resurrected

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi, Ayelet Zurer, Moritz Bleibtreu

Synopsis: Author Yoram Kaniuk's celebrated 1971 novel concerning a charismatic yet questionably sane Holocaust survivor comes to the screen in this dark drama starring Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, and Derek Jacobi. In the years before World War II, Adam Stein (Goldblum) was a Berlin entertainer who thrilled Read More

Anamorph

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Clea Duvall, James Rebhorn, Peter Stormare

Synopsis: A haunted New York City detective must delve into his dark past in order to stop a serial killer whose highly artistic modus operandi seems uncannily similar to that of a madman who stalked the city streets five years prior. When reclusive detective Stan Aubray (Willem Dafoe) gunned down Read More

The Dust of Time

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz, Michel Piccoli, Irène Jacob

Synopsis: A filmmaker looks to his family's history as the basis for a historical epic that reflects some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th Century in this grand-scale drama from Theo Angelopoulos. A. (Willem Dafoe) is a director struggling to complete shooting on his latest project, a sweeping Read More

The Walker

Actors: Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty

Synopsis: With The Walker, Paul Schrader unofficially updates themes and tropes first explored by his controversial erotic thriller American Gigolo (1980). Woody Harrelson stars as Carter Page III, an overtly gay, Virginia senator's son, paid as an asexual escort of middle-aged women in the upper-crust Read More

Mr. Bean's Holiday

Actors: Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Jean Rochefort, Karel Roden, Max Baldry, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: Mr. Bean -- the stick-legged goofball man-child created by Rowan Atkinson on television in the early '90s, and in the 1997 feature Bean -- undertakes his second cinematic adventure in the comic romp Mr. Bean's Holiday. Growing thoroughly sick of the wet, cold, and clammy London weather, Mr. Bean (Atkinson Read More

Spider-Man 3

Actors: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco

Synopsis: Your friendly neighborhood web-slinger is back, only this time his sunny outlook has become partially overcast in the third chapter of director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man saga. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco return to reprise their roles from the previous two installments, with Thomas Haden Church Read More

Paris, Je T'Aime

Synopsis: Twenty acclaimed filmmakers from around the world look at love in the City of Lights in this omnibus feature. Paris, Je T'Aime features 18 short stories, each set in a different part of Paris and each featuring a different cast and director (two segments were produced by two filmmakers in Read More

Go Go Tales

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, Matthew Modine, Asia Argento, Riccardo Scamarcio, Lou Doillon

Synopsis: Indie stalwart Abel Ferrara helms this quirky comedy about the goings-on at a downtown cabaret. Willem Defoe stars as Ray Ruby, the proprietor of a joint where all of the dancing girls have big dreams of working their way up to bigger and better things. But trouble begins to brew when money Read More

American Dreamz

Actors: Dennis Quaid, Hugh Grant, Mandy Moore, Willem Dafoe, Chris Klein

Synopsis: The President of the United States (Dennis Quaid) seems to be having a nervous breakdown after picking up a newspaper for the first time in four years, and when his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe) determines to get the Commander in Chief out of his pajamas and back into the spotlight, the stage is Read More

Inside Man

Actors: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Synopsis: The volatile showdown between a determined cop and a perfectionist bank robber is sent spiraling toward disaster when a scheming power broker steps in to take control of the situation in this hair-raising heist flick directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster Read More

Manderlay

Actors: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul

Synopsis: The politics of slavery and the follies of nation-building highlight Danish director Lars von Trier's thought-provoking follow-up to the director's 2003 drama Dogville, featuring The Village's Bryce Dallas Howard in the role originally played by Nicole Kidman, and shot in the same stage-bound Read More

Place des Victoires

Actors: Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Hippolyte Girardot

Synopsis: Japanese director Nobuhiro Suwa helms this poignant and heart-rending short subject, which represents his contribution to the omnibus film Paris, je t'aime. The episode concerns a Parisian mother (Juliette Binoche) devastated by the loss of her young son, who receives an unusual form of Read More

XXX: State of the Union

Actors: Ice Cube, Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss, Samuel L. Jackson

Synopsis: A new renegade fighter rises to defend the United States from an internal threat in this action thriller. Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) of the National Security Agency has successfully dealt with a number of threats to America's safety, but he faces a whole new challenge when he discovers a Read More

The Black Widow

Crew: Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Giada Colagrande, Seymour Cassel, Willem Dafoe, Emily McDonnell, Isaach de Bankolé, Claudio Botosso

Synopsis: Not to be confused with the 1987 Bob Rafelson/Debra Winger thriller of the same title, the 2005 Black Widow stars Giada Colagrande as Eleanora, a woman amorously involved with the shady and eccentric Karl. When Karl dies, Eleanora embarks on a trip to his bizarre home -- known as 'The Rubber Read More

Ripley Under Ground

Actors: Barry Pepper, Tom Wilkinson, Claire Forlani

The Aviator

Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda

Synopsis: Martin Scorsese directed this fast-moving, epic-scale biopic documenting the life and loves one of the most colorful Americans of the 20th century, Howard Hughes. The Aviator follows Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as the twentysomething millionaire, having already made a fortune improving Read More

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

Actors: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum

Synopsis: The first effort from director Wes Anderson since his critically beloved The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou finds the filmmaker re-teaming with a number of familiar faces, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, and Seymour Cassel. Murray plays Steve Zissou, an Read More

Overnight

Synopsis: The megalomaniacal rise and fall of filmmaker Troy Duffy is chronicled by one-time friends and colleagues in director Mark Smith's documentary. The film takes its title from the "overnight success" that befell Duffy in 1996, when the then-bartender was signed by Miramax president Harvey Weinstein Read More

Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate

Synopsis: In 1979, Michael Cimino went from being a director with one obscure Clint Eastwood action film and a handful of television commercials to his credit to one of the hottest talents in Hollywood, all on the strength of one film, The Deer Hunter. A multiple Oscar winner, a box-office success, and a Read More

Rockets Redglare!

Synopsis: Luis Fernandez de la Reguera directs the documentary Rockets Redglare!, a portrait of the New York personality from his early days around '50s hustlers to the East Village crowd of the '80s to his tragic death in 2001. Born Michael Morra in 1949, Rockets Redglare is a creative personality Read More

The Clearing

Actors: Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Willem Dafoe, Alessandro Nivola, Matt Craven

Synopsis: Dutch film producer Pieter Jan Brugge makes his directorial debut with the dramatic thriller The Clearing. Affluent executive Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) and his lovely wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren), live in a beautiful home in Pittsburg. One day, Wayne is kidnapped by disgruntled employee Arnold Read More

Spider-Man 2

Actors: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, Rosemary Harris, Donna Murphy

Synopsis: Stan Lee's all-too-human superhero returns to the screen in this highly anticipated sequel to 2002's blockbuster hit Spider-Man. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is attempting to juggle college classes and his job as a photographer with the Daily Bugle while maintaining his secret life as Read More

The Reckoning

Actors: Paul Bettany, Willem Dafoe, Brian Cox, Gina McKee, Ewen Bremner

Synopsis: Scottish filmmaker Paul McGuigan directs The Reckoning, based on the award-winning novel Morality Play by Barry Unsworth. Set in 14th century England, the story involves a priest named Nicholas (Paul Bettany) who leaves the church after committing adultery. He falls in with a troupe of traveling Read More

Control

Actors: Ray Liotta, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: It's been a long and hard life for death-row inmate Lee Ray Oliver (Ray Liotta), and by the time he is strapped to the gurney to be executed by lethal injection, his death sentence seems more like sweet release than ultimate punishment for a lifetime of crime. Awakening stunned and confused after Read More

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Actors: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Cheech Marin, Rubén Blades, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: Director Robert Rodriguez returns to the characters of his breakthrough hits El Mariachi and Desperado in this grand scale south-of-the-border action-adventure saga. Sands (Johnny Depp) is a rogue CIA agent who is working in cahoots with Mexican officials who've caught wind of a plan by corrupt Read More

Finding Nemo

Actors: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett

Synopsis: Andrew Stanton, who helped write Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., co-wrote and directed this computer-animated comedy-adventure about finding a very small fish in a very large ocean. Marlin (voice of Albert Brooks) is a more-than-slightly paranoid Clown Fish who is extremely devoted to his young son Read More

Hollywood High

Synopsis: This exhaustively researched cable-TV documentary traces the history of drug movies, from camp classics like Reefer Madness to more serious and sober examinations like Requiem for a Dream. Top-heavy with clips from such once-shocking groundbreakers as The Man With the Golden Arm, the "head" flicks Read More

Auto Focus

Actors: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, Ron Leibman

Synopsis: The life and sordid, untimely death of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane are explored by director Paul Schrader in this biopic, which marks one of the few times the filmmaker has not scripted his own film. Auto Focus chronologically traces the meteoric rise of Crane's show business career, beginning Read More

Spider-Man

Actors: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson

Synopsis: After incorporating elements of comic book style and design into many of his films, director Sam Raimi helms this straight-ahead, big-budget comic book adaptation, which also marks acclaimed young actor Tobey Maguire's first dip into live-action blockbuster filmmaking. Spider-Man follows the Read More

Pavilion of Women

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Luo Yan, Shek Sau, John Cho

Synopsis: A woman defies convention to find happiness, only to discover the costs are greater than she imagined in this drama based on the novel by Pearl S. Buck. In 1938, with Communist rebels on the rise in China and Imperial Japan intent upon expanding its rule into Manchuria and China, Lord Wu (Shek Read More

Edges of the Lord

Actors: Haley Joel Osment, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: A Jewish boy struggling to survive the Nazi pogrom during World War II finds an unexpected ally in this period drama. As Nazi troops invade Poland, a young boy from Krakow named Romek (Haley Joel Osment) is given to friends by his parents, who smuggle him out of town in hopes of saving him from Read More

Bullfighter

Synopsis: A unique Western for the new millennium, director Rune Bendixen's Bullfighter tells the darkly comic tale of a drifter framed for murder and subsequently hunted by a horde of unrelenting assassins. Jack (Olivier Martinez) is a wanderer whose aimless roaming leads him to a number of interesting Read More

Shadow of the Vampire

Actors: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard

Synopsis: The torturous production of the classic 1922 vampire film Nosferatu is recreated in this stylized account of director F.W. Murnau and his obsession with creating realistic horror by any means necessary -- even if those means include actual bloodletting. The film begins as Murnau (John Malkovich) Read More

Animal Factory

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Edward Furlong, Seymour Cassel, Mickey Rourke, Steve Buscemi

Synopsis: Actor-turned-director Steve Buscemi follows up on his restrained 1996 directorial debut Trees Lounge (1996) with this gritty, understated prison drama. Twenty-one-year-old suburban kid Ron (Edward Furlong) got busted for dealing drugs and slapped with an especially severe jail sentence. Though he Read More

American Psycho

Actors: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis

Synopsis: Bret Easton Ellis' dark and violent satire of America in the 1980s is brought to the screen in this unsettling drama with black comic overtones. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), the son of a wealthy Wall Street financier, is pursuing his own lucrative career with his father's firm. Bateman is the Read More

The Boondock Saints

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Billy Connolly

Synopsis: Feeling that they are doing God's will, two Catholic men from Boston set out to kill everyone in this Reservoir Dogs-style vigilante thriller. Brothers Conner and Murphy MacManus (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) take to performing their divine duty against the Russian mob. They Read More

FilmFest, Vol. 5

The Directors: Martin Scorsese

Synopsis: The American Film Institute's Directors: Martin Scorsese profiles the great director and offers insight into Scorsese's working methods, philosophies, and intentions. The documentary examines his total career, including his apprenticeship with Roger Corman, the great controversy over Last Temptation of Christ Read More

The Directors: David Cronenberg

Synopsis: For those who enjoy discovering or learning more about directors with unique or even bizarre filmmaking interests, David Cronenberg is a true find. His movie Crash tells the story of a group of people who think sex is best when it involves violent car accidents, his remake of The Fly is an eerie Read More

New Rose Hotel

Actors: Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, Yoshitaka Amano, Annabella Sciorra

Synopsis: Abel Ferrara directed this erotic thriller adapted by Ferrara and Christ Zois from a short story by science fiction author William Gibson (in his Burning Chrome collection). Global corporations rule the world, and corporate raider Fox (Christopher Walken) and his deputy X (Willem Dafoe) could Read More

eXistenZ

Actors: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Don McKellar

Synopsis: Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who has long been fascinated by the ways new technology shapes and manipulates the human beings who believe they are its masters, is in familiar territory with eXistenZ, a futuristic thriller which combines elements of science fiction, horror and Read More

Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle

Actors: Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: A complex and multifaceted forgotten artist whose work found critical acclaim at New York City's Betty Parson's Gallery from 1949 to 1967, Forrest Bees lives a private life in an isolated bait camp in Texas and his story is one of great perseverance and tragedy. Based on alchemy, Jungian Read More

Affliction

Actors: Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek, Willem Dafoe, Mary Beth Hurt

Synopsis: Nick Nolte and James Coburn deliver some of the finest work of their respective careers in this powerful but troubling adaptation of Russell Banks's novel. Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is the sheriff in a small New England town; it's a part-time job with few taxing responsibilities, and Wade fills Read More

Lulu On The Bridge

Actors: Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Willem Dafoe, Gina Gershon, Mandy Patinkin

Synopsis: Writer Paul Auster made his solo directorial debut with this romantic drama about an affair between a middle-aged musician and an aspiring actress. Hit by a stray bullet during a nightclub shooting, jazz saxophonist Izzy Maurer (Harvey Keitel) can no longer play, and he falls into a depression. Read More

What Is Yoga?

Synopsis: A common question about this ancient healing art: is it a form of exercise? Does it relieve stress? The answers to these and other questions are revealed during conversations with David Life and Sharon Gannon, the founding directors of Jivamukti Yoga Center in New York City (one of the leading Read More

Speed 2: Cruise Control

Actors: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Brian McCardie

Synopsis: Indications were that this action sequel was in trouble before production began, when the male lead from the first film, Keanu Reeves, declined a role in the follow-up. Sandra Bullock returns as Annie Porter, an accident-prone ditz who is thrilled when her boyfriend Alex (Jason Patric) presents Read More

Basquiat

Actors: Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Benicio Del Toro, Claire Forlani, David Bowie

Synopsis: Andy Warhol was a phenomenon who warrants a lot of explaining: a completely colorless mega-star celebrity, and a kind of LaBrea Tarpit for a vivid and talented collection of oddballs in the New York scene. He fostered their continued degeneration into weird lifestyles and heavy drug use; and at Read More

The English Patient

Actors: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews

Synopsis: Anthony Minghella wrote and directed this award-winning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel about a doomed and tragic romance set against the backdrop of World War II. In a field hospital in Italy, Hana (Juliette Binoche), a nurse from Canada, is caring for a pilot who was horribly burned in a Read More

Victory

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Simon Callow, Jean Yanne, Ho Yi

Synopsis: This third feature film version of Joseph Conrad's tragic romantic drama (the best of which remains John Cromwell's 1940 adaptation) is the one that stick's closest to the original story of a reclusive, hard-hearted fellow living on a private island in the Dutch East Indies who must protect his Read More

Tom & Viv

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton, Nickolas Grace

Synopsis: Willem Dafoe stars as groundbreaking early 20th century American poet T.S. Eliot in this biopic focusing on Eliot's disastrous marriage. Young Tom Eliot meets the flamboyant Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson) while they are both students at Oxford University in England in 1914. Eliot is Read More

The Night and the Moment

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Lena Olin, Miranda Richardson, Jean-Claude Carrière, Carole Richert

Synopsis: This drama is based upon an 18th century French novel by Crebillon. It represents the sharp conversations between a clever, free-thinking writer and a beautiful noblewoman as he tries to seduce her. At her request, he must recount his previous love exploits. He also describes the times he spent in Read More

Clear and Present Danger

Actors: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Anne Archer, Joaquim de Almeida, Henry Czerny

Synopsis: This is the third film based on Tom Clancy's high-tech espionage potboilers starring CIA deputy director Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford, returning to the Ryan role after his first go-round in 1992's Patriot Games, is assigned to a delicate anti-drug investigation after a close friend of the President (a Read More

Body of Evidence

Actors: Madonna, Willem Dafoe, Anne Archer, Joe Mantegna, Julianne Moore

Synopsis: Madonna plays Rebecca Carlson, a sex bomb who parades naked in front of the open windows of her houseboat at all hours while the lobstermen catch crabs. This entry in the Basic Instinct sweepstakes poses the question: If love hurts, does sex kill? The judge and jury certainly want to find out when Read More

Faraway, So Close!

Actors: Horst Buchholz, Otto Sander, Peter Falk, Nastassja Kinski, Heinz Rühmann, Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Lou Reed, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: Wim Wenders revisits his masterpiece Der Himmel Uber Berlin in this film which picks up several years after the original left off. Cassiel (Otto Sander) is an angel who watches over the lives of the people of recently reunified Berlin with Raphaella (Nastassja Kinski). Damiel (Bruno Ganz) Read More

Light Sleeper

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, Dana Delany, David Clennon, Mary Beth Hurt

Synopsis: Paul Schrader's brilliant study of another alienated urban denizen skirting the borderline of madness stars Willem Dafoe as John Le Tour, a rich, upscale drug dealer for Manhattan professionals -- "White drugs for white people," as he puts it. John is a recovering addict and for him it's the Read More

White Sands

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Samuel L. Jackson, M. Emmet Walsh

Synopsis: A suicide found in the desert with 500,000 dollars cash stuffed in a briefcase makes Sheriff Ray Dolezal (Willem Dafoe) curious. What was the dead man up to? Sensing that if he follows the money, he'll find crime at the end of the trail, Dolezal assumes his identity. He soon discovers the dead man Read More

Fishing with John [TV Series]

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, Dennis Hopper, Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie, Tom Waits

Synopsis: Musician and independent film personality John Lurie hardly seems like the sort of guy who would host a TV show about fishing. But then again, Fishing With John was hardly a typical nature program; Lurie and guests such as Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Dillon take to the water in search of Read More

The Flight of the Intruder

Actors: Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Brad Johnson, Rosanna Arquette, Tom Sizemore

Synopsis: Two pilots go against the rule book in a bid to win the war in Viet Nam in this speculative military drama. Lieutenant Jake Grafton (Brad Johnson) is a U.S. Navy pilot stationed aboard an aircraft carrier after the death of his one-time flying partner Morgan McPherson (Christopher Rich), who Read More

Wild at Heart

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Isabella Rossellini

Synopsis: Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play a pair of lovers on the run in David Lynch's surrealist road movie Wild at Heart. Cage's Sailor Ripley is a violent ex-convict with an Elvis Presley fixation who falls in love with Dern's Lula Pace Fortune, the daughter of a rich, but mentally unstable, Southern Read More

Cry-Baby

Actors: Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Susan Tyrrell, Polly Bergen, Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop

Synopsis: John Waters does a quirky spin on '50s nostalgia in Cry-Baby, his musical homage to Rebel Without a Cause and Romeo and Juliet. Set in Baltimore in 1954 at the birth of rock & roll, the film features Johnny Depp as Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker. Depp is pure charisma as a juvenile delinquent with a Read More

Born on the Fourth of July

Actors: Tom Cruise, Raymond J. Barry, Caroline Kava, Kyra Sedgwick, Brian Larkin, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: The second of three films by co-writer/director Oliver Stone to explore the effects of the Vietnam War (Platoon and Heaven and Earth are the others), Born On The Fourth Of July tells the true story of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), a patriotic, All-American small town athlete who shocks his family by Read More

Triumph of the Spirit

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Edward James Olmos, Robert Loggia, Wendy Gazelle, Kelly Wolf

Synopsis: Triumph of the Spirit is the true story of Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Jewish boxer imprisoned in Auschwitz during World War II. Arrested while attempting to help his family and friends escape the Nazi juggernaut, Arouch (Dafoe) is slated for extermination. He manages to survive--and to serve as an Read More

Mississippi Burning

Actors: Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey

Synopsis: Mississippi Burning is an all-names-changed dramatization of the Ku Klux Klan's murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. Investigating the mysterious disappearances of the three activists are FBI agents Gene Hackman (older, wiser) and Willem Dafoe (younger, idealistic). A Southerner himself Read More

The Last Temptation of Christ

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Verna Bloom, Andre Gregory

Synopsis: Willem Dafoe plays Jesus Christ in this extraordinarily controversial adaptation of Nikos Kazantzaki's novel. The film depicts a sometimes reluctant, self-doubting Jesus, gradually coming to accept His divinity and the inexorability of His ultimate fate. The much-maligned sex scene with Mary Read More

Off Limits

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Gregory Hines, Fred Ward, Amanda Pays, Lim Kay Tong

Synopsis: Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe) and Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines) are military police from the army's Criminal Investigation Department assigned to find a serial killer in 1968 war-torn Saigon. Hookers have been ritualistically murdered, and the two cops spend their final days of active duty in the Read More

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

Actors: Tom Berenger, Ellen Burstyn, J. Kenneth Campbell, Richard Chaves, Josh Cruze

Synopsis: Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam was first telecast April 3, 1988, over the HBO cable service. Based on the book of the same name, the program is devoted to poignant recitations of letters to and from American participants of the Vietnam war. The letters are heard over images culled from Read More

Hitchhiker, Vol. 3

Synopsis: Page Fletcher stars as the title character in this 1983-1988 made-for-cable suspense anthology. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Platoon

Actors: Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker, Francesco Quinn

Synopsis: Oliver Stone's breakthrough as a director, Platoon is a brutally realistic look at a young soldier's tour of duty in Vietnam. Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is a college student who quits school to volunteer for the Army in the late '60s. He's shipped off to Vietnam, where he serves with a Read More

The Communists Are Comfortable (And Three Other Stories)

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Spalding Gray, Ron Vawter

Synopsis: This is an undistinguished, avant-garde film by director, editor, and narrator Ken Kobland that may confuse most viewers at best, and turn off others at worst. Ostensibly expressing a post-liberal depression, there is long monolog of an apparently disillusioned worker and some polemics written Read More

To Live and Die in L.A.

Actors: William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Debra Feuer, John Turturro

Synopsis: William Friedkin's crime thriller, based on a book by U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, concerns an arrogant Secret Service official who wants to get his man at any price. Willem Dafoe plays Eric Masters, an ultra-smooth counterfeiter who has managed to sidestep the police for years. He Read More

Streets of Fire

Actors: Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: More like a series of MTV sequences than a long-term narration, this super-thin story line focuses on a kidnapped singer (Diane Lane) and her ex-boyfriend (Michael Pare) who goes forth to save her through rainy streets, the roar of elevated subways, several alleys, and the usual warehouses. Each Read More

New York Nights

Actors: Peter Matthey, Missy O'Shea

Synopsis: New York Nights is a boring, poorly acted adaptation of the much more successful La Ronde by Max Ophül -- ironically barred for four years by the New York State censorship board when it was first released in 1950. The story sequence is the key to the film; nine episodes each have a character from Read More

Roadhouse 66

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Judge Reinhold, Kaaren Lee, Kate Vernon, Stephen Elliott

Synopsis: In this routine story for a teen audience, Beckman (Judge Reinhold) is a buttoned-down, upwardly-mobile type suddenly stranded in a small Arizona town when his car damaged by local youths. It is Labor Day weekend when Beckman and Johnny (Willem Dafoe), the streetwise hitchhiker who has with him Read More

The Hunger

Actors: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Cliff De Young, Beth Ehlers

Synopsis: The exquisitely beautiful Catherine Deneuve plays Miriam, a centuries-old vampire capable of bestowing the gift of immortality on her lovers -- namely her current partner John (David Bowie). To sustain their sanguinary requirements, the pair cruises New York nightclubs in search of victims (as Read More

The Hitchhiker [TV Series]

Synopsis: Among the first original anthology series to be produced for cable television, The Hitchhiker was a collection of tales of the supernatural and bizarre. The title character, played during the first season by Nicholas Campbell and thereafter by Page Fletcher, was an unnamed drifter who wandered Read More

The Loveless

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter, J. Don Ferguson

Synopsis: The period biker flick The Loveless marks the feature debut of both actor Willem Dafoe and writer/director Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days). Bigelow co-wrote and co-directed the film with Monty Montgomery, who would go on to produce Wild at Heart and The Portrait of a Lady. Dafoe plays Vance, a Read More

White Lies

Actors: Willem Dafoe

Heaven's Gate

Actors: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Sam Waterston, John Hurt, Brad Dourif

Synopsis: A notorious artistic and financial failure, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate was blamed for critically wounding the movie Western and definitively ushering out the 1970s Hollywood New Wave of young, brash, independent filmmakers. Taking a revisionist, post-Vietnam view of American imperialism Read More